How Spring Break Broke

Taking a step back from the photo everyone else is taking is way more interesting. Same goes for life.

As anyone could have predicted, I didn’t do the traditional spring break very well. It only made me want to publish more — but in different ways.

I got fired up about how creators are currently being screwed and starting warning creators about the great personal newsletter migration. 

Then, the other shoe dropped at Substack. I picked a fight when they invented a new-to-me form of unsubscribing. I can’t say what they did was wrong. I believe the way they did it was wrong, for both creators and their own (stated) business model.

I would expect more of the same across the creator economy. New picks and shovels are about to be invented for the latest gold rush. The trick will be recognizing which fit best for what creators are mining.

— CJ

French Goodbyes

Speaking of picking a fight, I challenged every nerd friend I have when I asked, “Is plain text best?” I hope I didn't lose too many of them in the process.

“You are underestimating the compounding awesomeness of continually fixing small broken things.” — Rands

“Boredom is everything, man. I think our loss of boredom in contemporary society is one of the greatest weird ambient losses. It is one of these things that it’s very hard to quantify the value of it. And we’ve lost it so completely and totally that we very rarely have moments to even re-experience it, unless you do it intentionally. And so for me, yeah, the boredom of these walks is, I would say, 50% of the value of it. It’s forcing yourself into a place where you’re not teleporting mentally. You just have to be there. And you have to recognize, like, ‘Oh my God, I have these thoughts.’ And it’s been extremely therapeutic.” — Craig Mod

“Advertising is at odds with the principles of creating good content: it requires a broad audience with a smaller, less manageable return.” — Ghost.org

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.” — Anonymous (another quote I had to change in my notes after researching who said it — never trust anything attributed to Mark Twain or Churchill)

“Think of many things. Do one.” — Cassell’s Book Of Quotations, Proverbs And Household Words via James Clear

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.” — David Ogilvy